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If Bitcoin Is So Secure, Why Have There Been Dozens of Bitcoin Bank Robberies?

11 points by uladzislau 13y ago

ye 13y ago
Because it's not the bitcoin that was broken, but the software that interacted with a wallet that had too much money in it. Smart exchanges keep most of the money in an offline wallet.
gmuslera 13y ago
If credit cards are so secure, why there are databases of usable credit cards all over the internet? The protocol is secure, the people and computers using it are not so much, if you get the public/private key of the wallet (that must be there for you to make transactions) you get control of that wallet. The same could be said about Tor, that even the NSA couldn't attack, so went after the other software their users were running and planting backdoors.
- PeterisP 13y ago
  The fact that you can even put 'credit cards' and 'secure' in a single sentence is testimony to how security is mostly determined by the social/legal infrastructure used, not the technical security properties of the protocol. By itself, the current concept of creditcards are probably the most insecure protocol that can be imagined - but people have made it work by doing a whole lot of things in the infrastructure. Technical things such as encryption of the numbers in transit&rest; social things such as not leaving the cards physically accessible to others; and legal things such as laws allowing chargebacks in case of fraud. Bitcoin? What good is a secure protocol if there's no recourse if a "bank" simply takes your money and disappears?
vezzy-fnord 13y ago
Since Bitcoin is a grassroots effort, still in its infancy and most importantly has a lower entry barrier, it attracts a lot of unskilled people, con artists and similar. The kind who don't use prepared SQL queries, who use floating point numbers in finance, disregard their home laws and who simply get into everything just to cash out at their users' expense. Not to say there aren't countless ways to scam people with fiat currency, but it's still a relatively low barrier to opening a business that deals with cryptocurrency.

11 points by uladzislau 13y ago

ye 13y ago

Because it's not the bitcoin that was broken, but the software that interacted with a wallet that had too much money in it. Smart exchanges keep most of the money in an offline wallet.

gmuslera 13y ago

If credit cards are so secure, why there are databases of usable credit cards all over the internet? The protocol is secure, the people and computers using it are not so much, if you get the public/private key of the wallet (that must be there for you to make transactions) you get control of that wallet. The same could be said about Tor, that even the NSA couldn't attack, so went after the other software their users were running and planting backdoors.

PeterisP 13y ago
The fact that you can even put 'credit cards' and 'secure' in a single sentence is testimony to how security is mostly determined by the social/legal infrastructure used, not the technical security properties of the protocol. By itself, the current concept of creditcards are probably the most insecure protocol that can be imagined - but people have made it work by doing a whole lot of things in the infrastructure. Technical things such as encryption of the numbers in transit&rest; social things such as not leaving the cards physically accessible to others; and legal things such as laws allowing chargebacks in case of fraud. Bitcoin? What good is a secure protocol if there's no recourse if a "bank" simply takes your money and disappears?

vezzy-fnord 13y ago

Since Bitcoin is a grassroots effort, still in its infancy and most importantly has a lower entry barrier, it attracts a lot of unskilled people, con artists and similar. The kind who don't use prepared SQL queries, who use floating point numbers in finance, disregard their home laws and who simply get into everything just to cash out at their users' expense. Not to say there aren't countless ways to scam people with fiat currency, but it's still a relatively low barrier to opening a business that deals with cryptocurrency.